The Chichilnisky-Heal Approach to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem

Sammanfattning: This essay explores a surprising intersection between economics and algebraic topology. On the economical side social choice is studied. A field which includes topics such as voting theory. Within standard economics this is often approached by discrete methods, such as Arrow's impossibility theorem. This essay will instead follow a continuous proof by Chichilnisky and Heal, which is based on a considerable amount of algebraic topology. Therefore the essay will cover a great deal of algebraic topology. In particular, the subject of obstruction theory, which provides clear conditions for the extension of a function to a larger space, is studied.